Kazakhstan sets ministry deadlines under Digital Qazaqstan, with real-time budget control

Kazakhstan's Government set ministry-level deadlines for its Digital Qazaqstan strategy on 6 October, including a move to real-time control of budget payments, a single data architecture for industry and a duplicate-project review, according to the Prime Minister's office. The session, chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov, heard Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development Zhaslan Madiyev, who holds overall control and coordination of the strategy, together with four other ministers and the heads of KazMunayGas and Kazakhstan Temir Zholy.

Budget control and project discipline

The finance directive is the most governance-relevant. Budget planning, treasury execution, state asset management and auditing are to be linked in one digital contour, the digital tenge is to support end-to-end traceability of budget funds and smart contracts, and control is to move from post-factum to real time at the point of payment, the release says. Within two months the Ministry of Finance must identify priority budget, tax and control processes that can be decided automatically using state data and risk models.

The same release sets discipline on digital spending. The Ministry of AI and Digital Development must, within two months, review ongoing and planned digital projects, find duplicates and consolidate them on a single architecture and shared government platforms. By the end of 2026 it must prioritise projects with the Ministry of Finance, and new budget applications for digitalisation will be assessed on fit with the strategy's architecture and on expected economic impact. Success is to be judged by achieved indicators, not by the number of projects launched, and senior leaders are personally accountable.

Services, personal data and cybersecurity

Madiyev said 51 services are available through eGov GPT, a digital assistant used in the new digital population offices, and that about 150 are planned by the end of 2026, focused on the services that generate 80 per cent of traffic, according to a separate release. The targets are 40 per cent of services AI-powered by 2028 and service delivery time halved by 2029. The AI-assisted e-Otinish system has processed more than 3.2 million requests.

On personal data, the release says 481 digital systems are connected to the personal data access control service, covering all state systems. From January to August eGov processed more than 370 million requests, with 719,000 consent revocations recorded. On cybersecurity, 130 of 432 critical digital assets are connected to the operational information security centre, with coverage targets of 50 per cent by the end of 2026, 70 per cent in 2027 and 90 per cent in 2028. The release does not describe specific AI oversight or data-protection rules for eGov GPT itself.

Sector deadlines

• Energy: a digital inventory of key facilities and unified sector data requirements are due by the end of 2026, and digital twins must be fully launched across 12 major fields by the end of 2028, according to the session release. The Energy Minister's report lists 20 initiatives through 2029, a portfolio of 45 AI projects of which 34 are in implementation, and three documents due by the end of 2026: a priority registry of AI solutions and architectures for digital twins and for cybersecurity.
• Construction: AI-assisted completeness checks have covered 864 projects, cutting verification from five working days to two, and three further AI modules are due by the end of 2026, the release says. It does not name the body performing the state expertise or the legal basis, and does not say whether humans review the AI output.
• Agriculture: the digital subsidy system has more than 209,000 users and the livestock system tracks more than 39.6 million animals, according to the agriculture release. Within one month the ministry must set support measures that move to a proactive format using farms' digital profile data, the session release says.
• Transport: Kazakhstan Temir Zholy must transfer freight data to the unified data lake within one month, and the ministry must within two months identify the worst urban bottlenecks and launch an intelligent traffic management pilot, the release says.

The session release gives no budget amounts and does not mention implementing rules under the Law on Artificial Intelligence, and the eGov GPT release gives no cost figure for the expansion. The only quantified economic estimate in the set is the Energy Ministry's, which the release puts at about 23 billion tenge a year from AI projects, a sum of three estimates of which oil and gas accounts for 22.5 billion. The government has therefore published deadlines and owners for each sector, and the test of the strategy will be whether the two-month and one-month tasks are reported as completed.